


you know just how to be cruel

by ellenuiene



Series: feel the hollowness inside of your heart [1]
Category: Black Widow (Movie 2020), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bucky Barnes & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Bucky and Natasha are Shield agents, F/F, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Natasha was Pepper's secretary and they fell in love, POV Natasha Romanov, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Iron Man 2, Protective Pepper Potts, angsty lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 17:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellenuiene/pseuds/ellenuiene
Summary: Not many people knew it, but Pepper was angry. That quiet anger always steamed underneath her soft skin which always smelled like her pineapple body spray and those chocolate candles she loved to burn. She was terrified and eventually, it turned into anger."I never told you that it isn't dangerous. I only promised you that I won't die without your knowledge," words felt ashy in Natasha's mouth. It felt as if she was swallowing mouthfuls of sand with every single syllable and it was choking her.Pepper's breathing was ragged. Her warm hands were slightly shaking as she took one deep breath after another and was probably thinking how to stab her or any other sane way to bring her to her senses.or: angsty lesbians who can't admit their feelings.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts/Natasha Romanov
Series: feel the hollowness inside of your heart [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2213826
Kudos: 13





	you know just how to be cruel

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story on ao3 and the whole process is confusing af but here we goo  
> Basically, about a month ago I rewatched all of the mcu and for some reason, I couldn't get the idea of Pepper/Natasha out of my head after im2 and then as an angsty lesbian I decided to dedicate my night to write this so I can finally get it out of my head.  
> I'm not sure about the timeline here. The way I imagine it is that after im2 Pepper/Natasha got together (whether it was before Avengers or after is up to you, though I love angst so I imagine they went through a lot before getting actually together together), and ever since then been very awkward lesbians. And then catws happened the way it did and now Natasha and Bucky are kinda besties because they met each other in the red room and they have similar traumas? Idk, my mind takes me to weird places.  
> Title from Sir Chloe’s Michelle  
> Enjoy and thank you for reading!!

The night was dark and cold. The type of cold that froze you to the very depths of your bones and made you feel as if you‘re going to shatter into tiny pieces once you dare to move.

Natasha felt the same, old phantom pain at the bottom of her spine as she bent over and grabbed a first aid kit from underneath her sink. Closing the creaking door she dropped the light kit into the awaiting hands of the one strawberry blonde who stood behind her on her shaking legs and couldn‘t take her eyes off of her.

As she turned around, the redhead could only hiss at the pain in her abdomen, which was caused by her bruised ribs. She was lucky that James was there, having followed her without permission because without the steel in his blue eyes and the cold gun in his silver hand she wouldn‘t have made it out alive.

“Strip,“ Natasha knew that Pepper intended to spit out that word with venom and all of the anger which was steaming beneath her glowing skin, but instead it came out breathy and shaky. While Pepper gave her enough space and didn‘t try to help as she painfully hopped up on the counter, she let herself finally take a look at the other woman.

Her hair was loose on her shoulders and fell in delicate, if not a bit messy, waves. A couple of locks framed her worry-stricken face as she took a few steps towards Natasha, who was trying her best not to grunt out of pain as she adjusted her position on the counter.

The light in the dirty bathroom was dim and certainly didn't do wonders to Pepper's complexion but Natasha couldn't care less. She found herself unable to tear her own eyes away from those waves and blue eyes which tried to take in as much damage as they could through the clothes.

Once she found herself comfortable enough, as comfortable as she could be in such a situation, and such physical pain, Natasha grabbed the bottom of her skin-tight black shirt and lifted it as much as she could. Apparently, it wasn't enough for Pepper because she sighed loudly and dropped the kit next to Natasha's thigh while placing her own body between her spread legs. Grabbing the shirt she slapped the redhead's palm slightly and took over the task of lifting the blood-soaked and ripped material over her head.

Tossing the offending shirt in the bathtub, which was right behind her, Pepper put her hot and slightly sweaty palms on Natasha's thighs. She could feel her skin heating up straight away, just from that touch through the leather material of her pants, and maybe before, while her conditioning was still rattling around in her brain and intruding every single independent thought she had, she would have felt embarrassed, but not now.

Nowadays Natasha felt oddly proud of the fact that this well-put and organized woman looked at her with raging fire inside her blue eyes and ignited a flame inside the assassin's chest. She felt shivers run down her naked spine just from the thought of Pepper's touch on her bare skin and even though she knew that this knowledge would leave Clint howling with laughter, Sam chuckling with amusement behind his eyes, and make James look at her with that knowing understanding in his eyes, which always made Steve frown, she wasn't embarrassed by it.

She was rather proud.

"This is funny to you?" the first thing she registered was the cold in that exact same place where Pepper's hands were as she lifted them and grabbed the abandoned first aid kit, opening it and grabbing the towel which was hanging on an open door handle.

Natasha realized that she was smiling a bit too late because the blonde wouldn't even look in the direction of her face as she turned the faucet on wetting the elephant bone-colored towel. The smile dropped off her face as she watched long waves of that soft hair which she loved seeing in a messy bun in the early mornings while this tired woman laid beside her with her magnificent eyes closed and small breaths escaping her lightly open mouth.

"Sorry," Natasha let out a quiet hiss as the same wet towel was pressed on a big gash below her left collarbone. It was an ugly wound, like every other one which she always carried back home from her missions, but nowadays Pepper didn't even frown nor showed any emotion related to the gory image adorned with clotted blood which ran all the way down through the space between her breasts, staining her bra, and stopping at her stomach.

Pepper didn't acknowledge the apology, choosing to ignore it, in order to focus on the task at hand. She always did this - turned off, or at least tried to, that part of her brain which was panicking over the fact that Natasha was hurt and focused on treating her wounds. _It's the least I can do_ , she said about a month ago when James had to almost carry her up the stairs because a bullet grazed her side and she didn't bandage it because it wasn't supposed to bleed this much.

Not many people knew it, but Pepper was angry. That quiet anger always steamed underneath her soft skin which always smelled like her pineapple body spray and those chocolate candles she loved to burn. She was terrified and eventually, it turned into anger once she realized that no matter how infatuated Natasha is with her, she wouldn't leave S.H.I.E.L.D. until she felt that at least half of the red from her ledger was washed out.

And she wasn't angry at her or at least Natasha hoped that she wasn't. Mostly she was pissed at Nick, who allowed one of his best agents to skip the medical check-up after every mission on the condition that she would show up for debriefs the next morning.

"James showed up today. I still need to grill his ass about that once he shows up," soothing was not Natasha's strong suit. Usually, she would whisper quiet sentences about the mission and in such a way reminded Pepper that she wasn't alone in the field. She always had James's cold calculating mind and brutal force behind her back, Sam’s newfound rage steaming beneath his skin and his sharp wings casting shadows over her and occasionally Clint's all-seeing eyes and unwavering hands on the highest surfaces. She was safe.

"I believe Steve's going to do that for both of us. He was supposed to be on bed rest for at least another week," Pepper's quiet and lullaby-like voice tingled Natasha's bare shoulder and tickled her eardrums. She let herself close her own tired eyes for a couple of seconds basking in that sound because it was the first time since yesterday's morning that she heard that voice not filled with bottled rage and barely contained shouts.

"I didn't call him. Didn't even tell him where Borisov was going to be. He just showed up," she would have shrugged her shoulders if her ribs didn't hurt like a bitch and if Pepper's hands weren't cleaning up the blood around the gash. "I didn't even need his help-"

"Do you remember the look on Steve's face when he saw him?" Natasha opened her eyes so quickly she thought she was going to collapse and fall off the counter.

As an agent and one of Nick's most favorable assassins, she was talented in a variety of things. She noticed every exit in the room the second her foot crossed the threshold, she knew how to kill a man with a dart without touching him, she knew how to maneuver her body in such tight spaces so she wouldn't be seen, and lately, she has been learning the art of invisibility while being in a crowded room courtesy of one James Barnes, but the thing she absolutely sucked at was raw, true feelings creeping up her throat as she looked Pepper dead in the eyes.

"Virgi-"

"Don't Virginia me, Natasha. If it would have been you pierced with that sword you would have died in seconds. James almost died and he's enhanced. So don't try your bullshit excuses with me about how this isn't dangerous because it is," Pepper’s slender fingers tossed the towel in the sink behind Natasha as she grabbed the ointment from the kit and opened it.

"I never told you that it isn't dangerous. I only promised you that I won't die without your knowledge," words felt ashy in her mouth. It felt as if she was swallowing mouthfuls of sand with every single syllable and it was choking her. Natasha's face felt cold with cold sweat beads adorning her forehead and her skin felt clammy. She watched as Pepper's delicate fingers slowly and gently rubbed a small amount of ointment into the edges of the gash.

Pepper's breathing was ragged. Her warm hands were slightly shaking as she took one deep breath after another and was probably thinking how to stab her or any other sane way to bring her to her senses.

"It really says a lot about our relationship if you're not willing to promise me to not die, period. Without conditions."

Natasha tended to forget the times when she was terrified out of her mind. Like that time a year ago when Pepper didn't pick up her phone for 18 straight hours and she herself was stuck on a mission in Belgium. Or like that time years ago when The Winter Soldier was chasing her down a highway and she knew that she isn't making it out alive. Or that night 11 days ago when their unusual group, consisting of her and Steve on the ground, James on the bridge, Sam high in the sky, and Clint on the fifteenth floor on the office building was trying to take out a terrorist organization, or at least what was left of them, in the middle of Vienna when she heard Sam’s terrified voice screaming at them to _get to the fucking bridge now_. Part of her wishes she just stayed on the ground just so she could shake that image of James on his knees, blood running down his chin from his parted lips and _a fucking sword_ of all things pierced cleanly through his stomach. He already looked half-dead as Steve send his shield straight through the left assailant's neck and fell on his knees in front of him.

Natasha tried to forget the weakness in her knees which made her stumble as she frantically yelled in her comms for medevac and tried to not throw up as she watched the terrified look on Steve's face. She wished she could forget that cloudiness and that sorrow but it visited her nightmares every night. And eventually, after another screaming night, Pepper had enough and she told her what she saw and what she couldn't forget.

Every time she saw those two after that night on the bridge Steve didn't take his eyes off James for more than a couple of minutes as if he knew that the longer he stayed away the faster he'll disappear.

"I don't know what to tell you," her voice was shaking. It was so pathetically noticeable that she felt like a child, which wasn't correct since she didn't cry as a child. She felt Pepper's delicate fingers massage her collarbone and brush her jawline lightly as she finally lifted her gaze and looked straight into Natasha's green eyes.

She didn't say anything as her fingers, which smelled like ointment, splayed on her cheek and brushed her cheekbone, which was decorated with a bruise. Natasha knew that Pepper felt weak and of no use, as she sat in her office at Stark Industries while Natasha hid a couple of dozen knives on her person at all times and carried her guns as if they were an extension of her. She wanted to help her scrub the blood under her fingernails and out of her jackets but at the end of the day, she could only patch up the wounds and hope that there's something left to patch up when they come back.

“You are going to kill yourself one day and you expect me to be okay if you manage to call me just before you die. I don’t want to hear your last words and have them stuck in my head, in my nightmares. And I certainly don’t want Steve or Sam to call me and tell me where your body is so I can say goodbye.”

She still didn’t know what to say. Truth be told, Natasha was so good with words that this moment felt like a stab in the chest. This one and every single other one when Pepper looked at her like this and made her rethink every single choice she made once she got her freedom back. It felt like a breath of fresh air to gaze into those ocean blues. Except for the fact, that that breath was choking her and she could feel tears escape her eyes and like hot lava droplets run down her cheeks.

“Are you going to walk away?” she whispered unconsciously turning her face into a soft caress of Pepper’s palm and leaving a whisper of a kiss on her skin. She stared right into her lover’s eyes and probably for the first time didn’t physically flinch once that word entered her mind.

One thing which she always knew, believed, and lived by, to Sam’s absolute horror, was that love was poison. Maybe it didn’t exist but if it did it was poison. It was a rope around a neck, worn as a necklace, a knife stabbed straight into her first lumbar vertebra. She knew it was poison when she watched Steve's quiet and unfathomable grief once he came back from the ice and 11 days ago as he whispered stupid and worthless whispers while he was on his knees in front of a dying man who owned his body and soul. And here she was, fooling herself that her feelings for this woman in front of her were only an infatuation that will end once Pepper got her fill. Truth was, she will probably willow away once Pepper’s high heels faded into the background, her sweatpants weren’t stolen every Friday night and she didn’t feel those calculated hands tangling into her hair, twisting it and ripping her from inside out.

“It would be the easier choice.”

Pepper’s rounded and perfectly painted nail scrapped her bottom lip as her other hand engulfed her other cheek while both of her thumbs brushed her tears away. Natasha allowed herself to indulge in shameless contact and grabbed the blonde’s waist which was covered by a black hoodie, which at some point belonged to one of her boys until it eventually ended up in her closet and on Pepper’s body. Wrapping her hands around it she pulled her _lover_ closer and spread her legs further.

It was exhilarating. Being with Pepper was exciting on the most boring nights when they binged watched Netflix shows and fucked around on the couch and intoxicating on late nights spend underneath thin sheets until early mornings when James barged in her apartment with apologetic Steve in tow or Tony bombarded Pepper’s phone until she picked up.

“You should,” Natasha felt her throat close up once she forced those words out and tangled her fingers into those waves which tickled her collarbones and breasts as Pepper leaned to rest their foreheads together. She was taller than her while standing so looking into those eyes at the same level was not something she was used to but addictive all the same. ”Leave, I mean. I’m not going to say you deserve better because that’s not my place, but you certainly don’t deserve this shithole, Virginia.”

Natasha’s apartment was worth a two out of five on the best day when she was bored and cleaned it but otherwise, compared to S.H.I.E.L.D. issued apartments and Pepper’s penthouse in the Tower, it was a disaster. But Natasha was diligent and careful and she didn’t want Nick to know her address so she stayed in the shadows. It would be easier if James and Pepper didn’t show up here as often as they did but even if she didn’t want to admit it she was starved for human contact and she couldn’t say no to Pepper’s bright eyes.

“You’re right, it’s not your place.” Pepper squished her cheeks harder and pulled her in while biting her lower lip between her teeth. Natasha’s breath got stuck in her chest as she wrapped her calves around the blonde’s upper thighs and ass, crossing them at ankles and pressing herself closer.

Her ribs were screaming at her and the same gash still required stitches, but she couldn’t care less as she got lost in the uncountable amount of kisses Pepper pressed against her dry lips while running her hands down her bare upper body leaving shivers and phantom touches everywhere she went. A small gasp left Pepper’s parted and reddening lips as Natasha sneaked her hand underneath the hoodie and sunk her nails into her soft skin. She could feel herself smiling as she pressed another kiss to Pepper’s mouth and traveled to her jaw while caressing her naked back. Natasha inhaled and let that pineapple body spray engulf her senses as she buried her face in Pepper’s neck and bit into her skin softly.

Just as her hand crept up Pepper’s back towards her bra the alarm planted on the wall next to the door to her apartment buzzed and let out a single beeping sound. Letting out a loud sigh she lifted her head and looked at the messy strawberry blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes. Her skin felt tingly where Pepper’s hands grabbed her waist, unintentionally squashing her aching ribs.

She wanted to stop Pepper from stepping away but her apartment door opened just as she let her hands down and fixed the hoodie. Natasha didn’t need to turn her head to look because she knew who was walking towards the bathroom from their footsteps alone. Pepper’s lithe fingers smoothed her hair and grabbed a little box from the kit which held needles and thread just as an intimidating shadow, which James bulky figure cut in the dim lighting, entered the room. Pepper took a couple of steps back and extended a hand with the box towards the long-haired man and allowed him to take her place. Pepper was only learning the art of patching someone up, while James did everything with such precision since his metal hand didn’t tremble nor shake.

Maybe that was the answer. Maybe Natasha needed to learn to put that turmoil behind her instead of letting it suffocate her because Pepper was learning. She had a couple of paperbacks on various bodily injuries and more than a couple, which she hid from Natasha, about recovery from past trauma. They never talked about it, she never made her utter a single word about the Red Room, about the girls, about The Winter Soldier or KGB but she was learning.

Natasha tore her eyes away from Pepper’s figure near the courter, on her right side and focused on the man in front of her who was sterilizing the needle with focus. Too much focus for her liking but she knew to keep her mouth shut because she wasn’t Sam and she certainly wasn’t an expert on relationships, let alone something as complicated as James and Steve’s connection. It wasn’t her place.

Wordlessly she extended her right hand and felt how a fire spread through her body once Pepper threaded their fingers together and squeezed lightly. She would take on dying in her dreams every night, drowning in her own blood or bathing in James’s agony and guts if once she woke up she would see those ocean blues and feel that desire inside her.

Natasha allowed her body to relax as James leaned slightly to the left so the shitty light on the ceiling could illuminate her gash. Just before his flesh fingers touched her skin he lifted his eyes and their gazes met. She could still remember how The Winter Soldier’s cold irises pierced through her and something in his eyes reminded her of those cold nights and chilling pistols against her forehead, right between her eyes.

She smiled.

Maybe she had a type.

“Steve needs to get that stick out of his ass,” he murmured underneath his breath, Pepper snorted, and Natasha grit her teeth as the needle slid through her skin. Pepper’s breath tickled the side of her face, her fingers squeezed her palm and maybe she was already learning as she sent a quiet telepathic apology to Steve for allowing James to sleep on her couch tonight and making him lose his mind with worry.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is welcome because I've been stuck in writers block for about 2-3 years now and have no idea what I'm doing.  
> Let's give a round of applause to these strong and powerful women who managed to bring me back from that agonizing phase of my life haha  
> Thank you for reading!!


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